ALM for Automotive Embedded Systems Development

Compliance with ISO 26262, IEC 61508, Automotive SPICE, CMMI and more

As an automotive Application Lifecycle Management platform, codeBeamer ALM enables you to ensure consistency, traceability, and the use of mature automotive development processes throughout the lifecycle. codeBeamer ALM is a TÜV “Trusted Tool” certified development platform. It is used successfully by automotive OEMs and suppliers around the world to comply with IEC 61508, ISO 26262, ASPICE, and other regulations.

Challenges of Compliance in Automotive Product Development

A rapid growth in the use of electrical, electronic and programmable safety-related embedded systems in passenger cars has propelled the need for safety standards. One of the most important standards is ISO 26262, defining functional safety guidelines for automotive safety systems.

Automotive development companies and teams have to understand and meet the requirements of further standards and guidelines including IEC 61508 (Functional Safety of Electrical/Electronic/Programmable Electronic Safety-related Systems), Automotive SPICE, and CMMI among others.

Car manufacturers and suppliers have to face the problem of managing large networks of geographically dispersed manufacturing facilities, vetting OEM suppliers, and qualifying development tools. All this greatly increases the complexity of automotive development, which calls for the use of a smart, future-proof software tool such as codeBeamer ALM.

Intland’s Automotive ISO 26262 Template

Intland’s Automotive ISO 26262 Template leverages the capabilities of codeBeamer ALM to help cut development time and costs while ensuring high product quality. Its ability to implement mature processes enables you to comply with automotive standards and guidelines.

codeBeamer’s capabilities help you comply with IEC 61508 and ISO 26262, adhere to the Automotive SPICE and CMMI models, and overall enable you to develop safety-related embedded systems up to ASIL D or SIL 3.

Request Intland’s Automotive ISO 26262 Template

To request the template, please complete this simple request form. You’ll get an e-mail with a brochure and further information on using the template.

Intland’s Automotive ISO 26262 Template for codeBeamer ALM

codeBeamer’s Features for Automotive Development

codeBeamer’s requirements trackers are flexibly configurable to store all relevant data (for example ASIL, type, complexity), as well as a complete change history on each item. The system handles the exporting and importing of requirements using ReqIF, offers integrations with JIRA® and IBM® Rational® DOORS®, and a round-trip export-import feature with MS Excel and Word. This helps ensure data consistency and collaboration between both internal departments and third party suppliers. UML diagrams can be simply imported from Enterprise Architect. Requirements may be saved into libraries for re-use, supporting the efficient management of product variants.

codeBeamer’s integrated architecture & single repository let you manage requirements throughout the lifecycle, with tasks, risks and test cases derived from and linked to them, maintaining gapless end-to-end traceability. Functional safety requirements (both hardware and software) may be derived from your safety goals. Compliance audits are further facilitated by the Traceability Browser, which allows you to simply visualize, and easily pull & export traceability reports. A Test Coverage Browser helps you efficiently implement requirements-based testing. Granular permission control and workflows with optional conditions and e-signatures may be used to ensure process enforcement and security. Intland’s Automotive ISO 26262 Template comes with preconfigured workflows & associations between work items, but is flexibly configurable to suit your custom requirements management processes.

In codeBeamer ALM, the process of software development is fully integrated in the lifecycle, so complete traceability between requirements, tasks, source code, test cases and releases is maintained. Release management lets you plan and manage all activities with time and effort estimates, and releases (milestones, versions) may be managed on an interactive Gantt chart. Statistics allow you to monitor the performance of separate development streams and individual releases. Release management, as well as codeBeamer’s entire feature set, is process agnostic, meaning that whether you decide to use the Waterfall (or V-Model) method, Agile, a Hybrid (Agile-Waterfall) approach, or scaled Agile via SAFe®, codeBeamer can aptly support and help streamline your processes.

A preconfigured FMEA feature set helps you identify and analyze all failure modes. ASIL values may be added to all hazards, and Risk Priority Numbers (RPNs) of failure modes will be automatically calculated to help risk prioritization.

codeBeamer’s FMEA functionality comes with a comprehensive guide to conducting Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, and can be used to simply identify, define, and control the mitigation or reduction of potential risks. Traceability between requirements, risks, test cases, and safety goals is maintained, and Risk Matrix Diagrams help visualize your risk levels before and after reduction or mitigation actions. An exportable FMEA Worksheet helps you present your failure modes and mitigation actions.

codeBeamer ALM supports role and member-based permissions, letting you control and restrict access to certain types of work items, or even individual artifacts. Using its advanced workflow configuration options, you can add steps to require authorization (e-signatures), letting you define safety-related approval workflows.

By default, codeBeamer ALM comes with a predefined hazard workflow out of the box that will help you identify and classify risks (determine their ASIL), and achieve safety goals by planning and executing actions for the control and mitigation of hazards (with predefined links to other work items). This workflow may be flexibly configured to suit your internal processes, and codeBeamer also lets you create complex workflows tailored to your needs.

Test Management in codeBeamer ALM enables the manual capturing of test cases and test sets, and saving these to test libraries for reuse, greatly facilitating variants management. Tests may be executed manually or automatically using codeBeamer’s Jenkins integration. During test execution, defects can be created and automatically linked to test cases and requirements, maintaining gapless end-to-end traceability. Parametrized testing is supported, and test cases may be run on different hardware and software configurations. Statistics on testing results may be simply analyzed and exported.

codeBeamer ALM supports integrated change management, letting you collect, manage and track change requests. Links between change requests and their related requirements & test cases can be simply maintained, and automatic notifications about suspected links set. Effort and time estimations about changing requirements can be saved, and reflected in the release planner. codeBeamer’s Gantt charts, flexible Kanban boards and release statistics help you visualize and manage work assignment and progress.

codeBeamer ALM supports various configuration management systems such as CVS, Subversion, Git, Mercurial and Plastic SCM. In addition to the out-of-the-box functionality of these version control systems, codeBeamer ALM provides repository management and access control plus traceability of code changes. When using Git for example, distributed source code development is supported by specific workflows.

Most important for ISO 26262 is the feature to relate defects, change requests or tasks to source code changes when committing source code into the repository. Issue relation can be enforced upon commit so no uncontrolled changes occur on the software level and the traceability between processes and development is guaranteed.

To help you prepare for ISO 26262 compliance audits, codeBeamer ALM provides various reporting options. Results/screens of the flexibly configurable Traceability Browser may be exported, along with those of the Test Coverage Browser which helps ensure the complete coverage of requirements with test cases. Flexible Wiki plugins allow you to create custom reports, and a preconfigured ‘Hazard by ASIL’ report is also available, showing hazards sorted by their assigned ASIL levels. Associations between hazards, safety goals and requirements can be displayed in matrices and conveniently exported. Risk Matrix Diagrams may be used to display associations as well as your general risk level.

codeBeamer’s Documents Management functionality offers a platform to support collaboration across teams and departments, providing a single source of truth as well as full change history on all documents. Access rules and dependencies are respected and versioning on all issues is taking place automatically in the background, so traceability into the past is guaranteed as well.

Baselines in codeBeamer ALM are lightweight snapshots of the current state of all your artifacts. You can select individual trackers or items to create baselines of. Baselines cover wiki pages, documents, comments, images, attachments etc. and may be browsed or compared with each other any time to see what has been changed.

Overview of Key Automotive Standards

ISO 26262 is an adaption of IEC 61508 for the automotive industry (more specifically, for automotive electric/electronic safety systems). Titled ‘Road vehicles – Functional safety’, this standard covers the entire lifecycle of all E/E safety-related systems in the automotive industry, from requirements and design through implementation, integration, configuration, validation and verification. In addition to requirements for individual products, it also defines requirements for safety management for the entire organization.

ISO 26262 is a risk-based standard standard that aims to define measures to avoid or control system failures, and to detect or mitigate the effects of failures. The standard describes a safety lifecycle for automotive products, affecting the functional safety-aspects of all phases of the lifecycle, but supports the tailoring of processes to individual needs to fulfil its requirements. A major part of ISO 26262 is the process that helps determine risk classes or ASILs (Automotive Safety Integrity Levels), and the necessary safety measures to reach an acceptable risk level.

Intland’s Automotive ISO 26262 Template supports compliance through its predefined artifacts, workflows, risk-related features, etc. and a comprehensive guide on ISO 26262. The template allows you to define and interlink hazards, risks, safety goals, requirements, tasks, test cases, etc. with full traceability maintained throughout the lifecycle. codeBeamer’s automotive-related trackers and workflows allow you to assign ASILs to each hazard, and to define safety requirements based on safety goals. Flexibly configurable reports are available to support and facilitate compliance audits.

As the parent standard of ISO 26262 and a number of other standards, IEC 61508 is a general functional safety standard that is widely applied in various industry sectors. Several other sector-specific standards have been derived from the “umbrella” standard IEC 61508, such as:

ISO 26262 – Automotive industry

IEC 62279 – Railway applications

IEC 61511 – Process industry / manufacturing processes

IEC 61513 – Nuclear power plants

IEC 62061 – Machinery system design

IEC 61508 employs a risk-based approach to safety-related system design, and specifies a safety lifecycle encompassing the analysis, realization and operation phases. The safety lifecycle set out by the standard begins with hazard and risk analysis. Once the likelihood and the consequence factors of risks have been determined, the risks are added to the risk class matrix. In this matrix, four classes are defined, from unacceptable risks (I) to risks that are acceptable but may need to be monitored (IV). Then, IEC 61508 defines four Safety Integrity Levels (SILs) with each level representing a more stringent degree of safety regulations.

codeBeamer’s advanced capabilities enable you to develop safety-related systems up to SIL 3. Its relevant ALM features that support compliance with IEC 61508 include:

gapless end-to-end traceability across the phases of requirements management, development management, and QA & test management and IT Operations / DevOps

As a derivative of the SPICE maturity model (ISO/IEC 15504), Automotive SPICE enables organizations within the automotive industry to assess and evaluate the suitability of themselves or their business partners and suppliers against a set of industry best practices. It’s a set of technical documents that guide software development processes, while also applying to relevant business management functions, basically making safety and reliability an organization-wide priority.

Based on these aspects, assessed businesses (processes) can reach capability maturity levels between 0 and 5 using the Process Assessment Model (PAM). Reaching the highest capability maturity level means that the company (process) “shows evidence of a complete and systemic approach to, and full achievement of, the defined process attribute in the assessed process”, as well as implements innovation to further optimize processes.

With the latest release of Automotive SPICE v3 in July 2015, PAM is now compliant with the new ISO 330xx series of standards, although the transition period for training and certification will not be completed until 2017. In PAM v3, the emphasis is still on traceability but in addition, it also addresses the issue of consistency when dealing with the traceability matrix in review.

codeBeamer ALM can greatly assist compliance with ISO/IEC 15504 (Automotive SPICE). It contains specific trackers, and features such as the Traceability Browser to help ensure, visualize and prove gapless end-to-end traceability, as well as advanced risk management functionality. Dependencies between items such as requirements, risks and test cases are recorded automatically. codeBeamer ALM also supports the use of workflows to enforce the use of mature processes and to manage approvals (sign-offs with e-signatures), and offers convenient reporting functionality to facilitate compliance audits.

Similar to ASPICE, the CMMI model assists businesses in developing or optimizing their working processes that are in line with strategic business goals. Many large companies and government institutions require CMMI for large projects, usually only allowing companies with CMMI (relevant levels) to participate in tenders. From the 5 levels of CMMI, most small companies can qualify for Level 2 and 3 enabling them to participate in tenders once qualified. CMMI measures capability maturity (the higher the maturity level, the lower the risk). Level 5 is especially dedicated for large enterprises. Organizational performance is measured via the Standard CMMI Appraisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI).

The advanced capabilities of codeBeamer ALM can help you achieve CMMI Level 2 compliance (Managed Processes Level). This includes complying with requirements in the following fields: